Privacy Policy

UnboundQuests is a platform for discovering, publishing, distributing, and supporting African and diasporic stories. We serve readers, authors, translators, narrators, editors, designers, and other creative contributors.

This Privacy Policy explains what personal information we collect, how we use it, when we share it, and what choices you have. It applies to our website, reading interfaces, creator tools, editorial marketplace features, payment flows, and related services.

Our platform is built for users in Africa and for descendants of Africa across the diaspora. We comply with South Africa’s Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA) and other applicable data protection laws.

Because our users may access UnboundQuests from different countries, some data may be processed across borders to operate the service, secure accounts, support payments, and improve platform quality.

We may collect account information such as your name, username, email address, password credentials, phone number, country, language preferences, and profile details.

If you use creator or marketplace features, we may collect professional profile information, contributor roles, payout details, tax or compliance information, portfolio materials, verification records, editorial submissions, and service-provider information.

If you use reading features, we may collect reading activity such as books opened, chapters accessed, previews viewed, purchases, subscriptions, unlock history, reading progress, device/session identifiers, and related product usage analytics.

If you make or receive payments through the platform, we may collect payment-related records such as transaction references, processor identifiers, wallet activity, voucher activity, subscription status, payout methods, royalty records, and entitlement records. We do not store full card numbers.

We may also collect content-related data such as uploaded manuscripts, revisions, chapter files, metadata, moderation results, editorial feedback, curation outcomes, and support communications.

We use your information to create and manage accounts, authenticate users, secure the platform, process purchases and subscriptions, grant reading entitlements, and deliver books, chapters, or other content you are allowed to access.

We use creator and contributor data to support publishing, editorial workflows, marketplace participation, royalties, payouts, moderation, compliance, and support operations.

We use platform usage data to improve discovery, recommendations, reader experience, creator tools, fraud prevention, service reliability, and quality assurance.

We may use automated systems, including AI-assisted tools, to support moderation, editorial analysis, metadata assistance, platform quality checks, and related operational functions.

We may record events such as chapter views, reading progress, feature usage, search and discovery interactions, recommendation signals, and related product telemetry. We use this information to improve reading experience, personalize discovery, understand engagement patterns, and support creator insights.

Analytics and telemetry are intended to improve the service and should not change your ownership rights in purchased content.

When you purchase a book, unlock a chapter, subscribe, top up a wallet, redeem a voucher, or receive creator earnings, we process the necessary account, payment, and transaction information required to complete that action.

We use PayPal and Paystack as our payment processors.

• PayPal acts as an independent data controller for the processing of your personal data in connection with the Payment Services. For more information on how PayPal processes your data, please see the PayPal Privacy Statement: https://www.paypal.com/us/legalhub/paypal/privacy-full

• Paystack acts as our data processor and processes your personal and payment information on our behalf in accordance with our instructions and our Data Processing Agreement. For details on Paystack’s data practices, please see their Merchant Privacy Policy: https://paystack.com/privacy/merchant

We share only the minimum personal and transaction data necessary to complete your purchase, handle refunds/chargebacks, detect fraud, resolve disputes, and comply with financial and legal obligations.

We may review content, metadata, appeals, reports, and platform activity to enforce our guidelines, maintain safety, and protect readers and creators.

This may include automated filters, human review, editorial assessments, AI-assisted quality checks, and review records connected to submissions, chapters, accounts, or marketplace activity.

We may use cookies, session storage, local storage, and similar technologies to keep you signed in, remember preferences, support reading continuity, improve performance, and understand product usage.

Some features may not work properly if these technologies are disabled.

We may share information with service providers and infrastructure partners that help us operate hosting, storage, content delivery, authentication, analytics, editorial workflows, support systems, notifications, payments, verification, and fraud prevention.

We may share information with payment processors (PayPal and Paystack) and payout providers when needed for purchases, subscriptions, wallet activity, creator earnings, refunds, charge handling, or compliance.

We may disclose information if required by law, legal process, platform safety needs, fraud investigations, policy enforcement, or to protect the rights of users, creators, readers, or UnboundQuests.

We do not sell personal information to advertisers.

Some profile information, book metadata, contributor credits, reviews, curation badges, marketplace information, and public-facing creator or content details may be visible to other users or the public depending on feature design and your use of the platform.

Please do not upload confidential information unless it is necessary for the feature you are using.

We retain information for as long as necessary to provide the service, maintain account history, comply with legal and financial obligations, resolve disputes, enforce policies, and support royalties, auditing, and platform integrity.

Some records may be retained even after account closure where required for transactional, tax, safety, or legal reasons.

We use reasonable technical and organizational measures to protect accounts, content, payment-related records, and platform data. However, no system can be guaranteed completely secure.

You are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of your password and protecting access to your account.

Depending on your location, you may have rights to access, correct, delete, or export certain personal information, or to object to or limit some processing.

You may also manage certain profile details, preferences, and account settings directly through the platform where available.

UnboundQuests is not intended for children below the age required by applicable law to create an account without parental or guardian involvement. If we learn that personal information was collected improperly from a child, we may take steps to remove it or restrict the account.

Because UnboundQuests serves Africa and the diaspora, your information may be processed in countries other than your own. By using the platform, you acknowledge that cross-border processing may occur where needed to operate the service.

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. If we make material changes, we may notify users through the platform, by email, or by posting an updated effective date.

For privacy questions, account concerns, or data-related requests, contact us through the support channels listed on the platform.